Sometimes, I even scare myself.

I'm not a stranger
No, I am yours
With crippled anger
And tears that still drip sore
A fragile flame aged
Is misery
And when our hearts meet
I know you see

I do not want to be afraid
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in
I'm tired of feeling so numb
Relief exists, I find it when I am cut

I may seem crazy
Or painfully shy
And these scars wouldn't be so hidden
If you would just look me in the eye
I feel alone here and cold here
Though I don't want to die
But the only anesthetic
That makes me feel anything, kills inside

I do not want to be afraid
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in
I'm tired of feeling so numb
Relief exists, I find it when I am cut
Pain
I am not alone
I am not alone

I am not a stranger
No, I am yours
With crippled anger
And tears that still drip sore

Plumb - Cut

You can fire me. But, Bitch, don't think you can take me.

One Two Bedroom, Two Bathroom Apartment
Plus
Three Classic Stress Cases with OCD and Perpetual Anxiety
Plus
Three Broken Hearts
Plus
Three Volcanic and Often Unstable Tempers
Equals
One Very, VERY Immaculate Home

I'm pretty sure the smell of bleach will never leave at this point. And you could probably eat off the toilet seats.. I guarantee they have less bacteria than restaurant tables.

Not usually, no.

Him: "What do you say we call it a draw, huh? No harm, no foul."

Her: "You poisoned me and tried to shoot me with arrows."

Him: "Okay, maybe a little bit of foul."

I love babies.

Can I just say that Rachel's little adopted niece, Abigail, is the cutest baby ever? Ok, I know I say that about a lot of babies. I say it about Mason all the time, but he's kind of leaving the "baby" stage. Rachel's sister Sara needed a sitter at the last minute and I GLADLY took the job. Sara and Jon adopted Abby from Taiwan. She's so sweet and so full of love and smiles. I so did not want to leave!!

The past couple of days have been rough. Every once in a while, something will happen that will cause me to pause and look around and see just how fallen our world really is. The despair weighs me down. I cannot even begin to fathom how God manages to feel as much as He does. If we are made in His image, and if He feels everything we feel.. I just cannot process how He puts up with us. I have spent a LOT of time in tears the past few days.. my heart breaks for this world that is so lost. Our young people these days get sucked in and spat back out and we all just sit back and watch it happen. I want to be able to do more. I feel so powerless sometimes. I want to help SO SO badly.. I want to be able to help take the hurt away... but sometimes I do not even know where to start. I wish I had a better way of explaining myself... My heart just hurts. I have to be so careful not to let the emotional agony completely swallow me whole. I want God to use me, but most of the time I just feel like I'm wandering around in the dark, fumbling for purpose. Some sort of road map to my life would be fantastic right about now.

Fine. Let's be angry and do it your way.

Crying on the corner, waiting in the rain
I swear I'll never ever wait again
You gave me your word, but words for you are lies
Darling, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd go
But it's time to let you know

I'm gonna harden my heart
I'm gonna swallow my tears
I'm going to turn and leave you here

All of my life, I've been waiting in the rain
I've been waiting for a feeling that never ever came
It feels so close, but always disappear
Darling, in your wildest dreams, you never had a clue
But it's time you got the news

I'm gonna harden my heart
I'm gonna swallow my tears
I'm going to turn and leave you here

Darling,in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd go
I'm gonna harden my heart
I'm gonna swallow my tears
Harden my heart, swallow my tears
I'm going to turn and leave you here

Quarter Flash - Harden My Heart

I think maybe he was right.

I feel better today.. more centered.. which is a totally lame word, but it seems to fit on some level. I leave you with a funny (courtesy of Fringe):

Peter: "Hey, we're looking for Big Bird."

Walter: "Don't be ridiculous. It's more like a pterodactyl."

Peter: "You're saying it had the claws of a lion and the fangs of a snake?"

Walter: "Reminds me of a woman I once knew in Cleveland."

Peter: "Walter, this thing would have been 8 feet long."

Walter: "Her name was Harriet."

Olivia: "How is everything?"

Peter: "Apparently, you're looking for a lion-snake named Harriet."

I'm going to need 781 boxes of denture cleaner.

Two of my closest friends, Shelby and Morgan, each have apartments by themselves in my apartment complex. I seriously don't understand how they do it. Maybe it is because I have a very large, very loud family and have grown accustomed to constant people and noise. Maybe it is because I have never actually lived alone. Whatever the reason, I am HATING having the apartment to myself. I am so beyond lonely. Even if I stay busy all day and go out at night, I still have to come home at some point to an empty apartment. The animals help... there are even some days when I prefer their company to that of the human variety. And though I am a total introvert and NEED alone time, I never expected to not have a choice. I hole up in my room when I am home because it is the only part of the apartment that I feel has always been JUST mine. The rest of the house depresses me. It is not that I CAN'T live alone.. like I'm some child that needs to be taken care of.. I just prefer knowing that there is someone else in the house, even if I'm not in the same room as they are. I AM SO FREAKING LONELY.

"Monster" is housewife for "raccoon."

I love my Jesus. Just when I think that God has tuned me out and no longer especially cared that I felt like I was drowning in my pain, He swoops in with a total moment of clarity and I'm able to realize everything is as it should be. He also reminded me once again that He has my best interests at heart, and sometimes pain is necessary to get me to where I need to be. He is faithful in answering prayer, but He does not always answer in the way I would have preferred. Even when I don't exactly know what I want, His answer may not be anything I expected. I can get so caught up in my own broken heart that I fail to see He has given me exactly what I asked for and needed.

Two nights ago, I found pot in Max's room. It almost killed me. With the way things have been for the last year or so, I didn't even think I had a heart left to break. It gave me physical chest pains to not only realize I had been played for a fool, but that maybe I never really knew Max to begin with. It makes you second guess yourself, and question your relationships with everyone around you. Max and I are unusually close as siblings. We've always been that way. It wasn't a secret that I put up with his crap way more than I probably should. But drugs in my house? I honestly thought he would never do that to me.. that he respected me too much. I was wrong. I KNEW I had to kick him out, but it was beyond hard for me (I finally understand what parents mean when they punish you and say "This hurts me more than it hurts you"). It is by far one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. The only way I even could gather enough strength to do it was by putting Dan first. His name is on the lease, and Max's is not. We would have been held responsible, and Dan's career would have been in the toilet. I will not allow that to happen. He deserves better than that... but it still hurts. I think I've cried like 15 times just in the last two days.

By this morning, I was ready to never get out of bed again. My life is generally pretty chaotic, but the last 6 or so months have been ridiculous. I could NOT get ahead of the drama, not to mention the amount of times I felt like the people I trusted the most kept slapping me in the face. I was so tired of hurting. Dan and I have been growing in leaps and bounds in our marriage.. I can't even begin to explain the amount of restoration God has done. All I could think about was getting out of San Diego. And THAT is when it hit me.

For months, I had praying for the strength to leave.. to do the Godly thing and follow my husband to Alaska. During Dan's deployment, I sort of put down roots here and I couldn't stomach the idea of leaving the people and places that were so comforting and safe to me. Every single day I would ask God how He expected me to just up and leave when things were so rocky with Dan and I felt so much more loved down here. I didn't exactly know how I wanted Him to go about getting me up there, but I was expecting something... well.. positive. Something that would not be painful and hard to deal with. I should have known better. The chain of events that have occurred since January were.. unpleasant. I was pretty much reeling from all the emotional blows. Things I had never even thought to worry about came out of nowhere, prompting my favorite lines to be: "What just happened?!" and "What is going on right now?!" By the time finding pot in Max's room rolled around, I was in a complete and total funk and could feel myself slipping into a depression. Last night, my prayers went something like: "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU EXPECT OF ME ANYMORE! WHERE ARE YOU?!" I could feel God moving in my marriage.. I was pretty doubtful I would ever feel the same about my relationship with Dan.. and actually, I was right.. I just didn't expect where we are now to be SO much more healthy and amazing. I knew it was all God, and while I was so thankful things were getting better in my marriage, I couldn't hear God about what I was supposed to be doing HERE. Imagine my surprise this morning when I realized that God had done exactly what I asked.. but He did it by removing every obstacle that was keeping me from leaving. I LOVED being Mason's nanny and I would cry every time I thought about leaving him.. but then his parents moved to Carlsbad, making the commute to work horrendous. His new nanny lives in Carlsbad as well, which means he will get to see her way more often than me (it's seriously like a 40 minute drive to their house). I loved my apartment, but the crime rate in my neighborhood has sky rocketed, making the expensive rent no longer worth it (a guy got stabbed in the head with a screwdriver in my parking lot and I swear an entire band of homeless people have moved to my street). It's so bad that even if I was staying here, I would be moving out of the area. The idea of leaving Max still kills me, but I no longer feel guilty about moving out of our apartment because he isn't living here anymore. The people I had been close to, the ones in my weekly routine that I couldn't imagine not being there, have either moved (or about to move), or circumstances in the relationship has led to much needed space. There have been numerous other things along those lines, and all were pretty painful to deal with. I was so focused on the individual events that I failed to see the big picture until now.

While I am still hurting in a lot of ways, it was a great relief to see that God is paying attention. I could kick myself for not trusting Him.. for getting frustrated with Him. It is ridiculous to me sometimes that I have been a Christian my entire life and despite God not EVER letting me down, I still expect Him to bail. So lame. It is a good thing that in my relationship with God, at least one of us knows the best course of action. Half the time I don't even know what I want.. my heart wanders.. I feel lost.. and yet I sometimes trust myself rather than trust God, or assume I know how things should go when my reality is so small and limited. Lucky for us as humans, God never even considers bailing on us.. and love doesn't get any better than that.

You're not sorry.

I feel like I need to just sit staring at the wall for a while. No, really. You get to a place where you think that there is no way your heart can be broken into any more pieces.. I hate the place my heart is in right now. I have worked SO hard to handle stress and overwhelming emotions in a healthy way.. and yet here I am again. All I want to do is crawl into my happy place (the bed) with my kids (the dogs) and turn off my cell phone and just be numb. It all just hurts too much. I can't handle all the lies. And I'm tired of being alone.

You're Not Sorry - Taylor Swift

All this time I was wasting
Hoping you would come around
I've been giving out chances every time
And all you do is let me down
And it's taken me this long
Baby, but I've figured you out
And you're thinking we'll be fine again
But not this time around

You don't have to call anymore
I won't pick up the phone
This is the last straw
Don't want to hurt anymore
And you can tell me that you're sorry
But I don't believe you
Baby, like I did before
You're not sorry, no no

You're looking so innocent
I might believe you if I didn't know
Could have loved you all my life
If you hadn't left me waiting in the cold
And you've got your share of secrets
And I'm tired of being the last to know
And now you're asking me to listen
Because it's worked each time before

You don't have to call anymore
I won't pick up the phone
This is the last straw
Don't want to hurt anymore
And you can tell me that you're sorry
But I don't believe you
Baby, like I did before
You're not sorry, no no
You're not sorry

You had me crawling for you, honey
And it never would have gone away
You used to shine so bright
But I watched all of it fade

You don't have to call anymore
I won't pick up the phone
This is the last straw
There's nothing left to beg for
And you can tell me that you're sorry
But I don't believe you
Baby, like I did before
You're not sorry, no no

High in protein, tastier than you might think. Especially millipedes.

Well, I successfully made it back to San Diego. It's so weird coming back here after being in such a small town. I almost immediately felt like the walls were closing in around me. This bizarre feeling, limbo space I am in is making me antsy. I understand now why God does not want us to be lukewarm.. why He doesn't want us to straddle the fence between the world and His Word. It makes things WAY harder than they need to be.

I had a flashback this evening of my second year in college. I had walked up to my friend, Morgan's, house and didn't take my keys. During the time I was over there helping her get ready for this big date she's been looking forward to for months now (it's complicated), Max came home from work. When he left, he locked the door thinking I was asleep in my room. By the time we figured out I was locked out, Max was well on his way to a friend's house who lives like 25 minutes away. He suggested I try the back door. Our apartment sits sort of inside a hill.. our front door is on ground level, but you go downstairs immediately upon entering. I am not coordinated at ALL, so trying to climb across this muddy hill (OF COURSE, the sprinklers had to have already gone off) without killing myself was ridiculous. I'm short, which makes climbing over fences next to impossible sometimes. I did manage to make it in without breaking anything, but I'm getting WAY too old for this sneaking into the house crap. :) It makes me laugh to think that during college when I lived with my parents, I was always sneaking IN rather than out. They always knew where I was, but worried about my lack of sleep and late nights. I know, I know.. I'm SUCH a rebel.

My parents went on a cruise this last week to Mexico, but ended up getting turned around thanks to the swine flu "epidemic." Rather than spending time in the warm sun on nice beaches, they instead got to spend time in San Fransisco. In the rain. At like 40 degrees. Good times.

Remember when you were little and the opposite sex was like the grossest thing EVER? How we all needed to get cootie shots because obviously the opposing gender was INFECTED? I've decided there is definitely something to that theory.

"I probably shouldn't say this
But at times I get so scared
When I think about the previous
Relationship we shared
It was awesome, but we lost it
It's not possible for me not to care
And now we're standing in the rain
And nothing is ever going to change
Until you hear, my dear

The 7 things I hate about you
You're vain, your games, you're insecure
You love me, you like her
You make my laugh, you make me cry
I don't know which side to buy
Your friends, they're jerks
When you act like them, just know it hurts
I want to be with the one I know
And the 7th thing I hate the most that you do?
You make me love you

It's awkward and silent
As I wait for you to say
What I need to hear now
Your sincere apology
When you mean it, I'll believe it
If you text it, I'll delete it
Let's be clear, I'm not coming back
You're taking 7 steps here

The 7 things I hate about you
You're vain, your games, you're insecure
You love me, you like her
You make my laugh, you make me cry
I don't know which side to buy
Your friends, they're jerks
When you act like them, just know it hurts
I want to be with the one I know
And the 7th thing I hate the most that you do?
You make me love you

And compared to all the great things
That would take too long to write
I probably should mention the 7 that I like

The 7 things I like about you
Your hair, your eyes, your old Levi's
When we kiss, I'm hypnotized
You make me laugh, you make me cry
But I guess that's both I'll have to buy
Your hands in mine
When we're intertwined every thing's all right
I want to be with the one that I know
And the 7th thing I like the most that you do?
You make me love you."